ASRC Research

Since its inception in January 1996, the Australian Stuttering Research Centre has received continuous external funding much of this in the form of competitive grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) which is federally funded.

The ASRC collaborates with colleagues from national and international institutions and centres and with graduate students.

The ASRC will continue its research into the nature and treatment of stuttering, with a number of research programs and individual research projects. People who stutter, or parents of children who stutter, who are interested in participating in ASRC research, should contact our Office Manager

ASRC Research Programs
The first of these is an NHMRC-funded program which is investigating the benefits of incorporating Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) into standard speech therapy for adults who stutter. This program will run into 2004 and is being conducted in conjunction with Associate Professor Ross Menzies, Director of the Anxiety Disorders Unit at the Faculty of Health Sciences at The University of Sydney.
It is known that a number of people who stutter suffer from social anxiety and many speech pathologists incorporate various strategies into their therapy to help clients deal with this. Yet the benefits of these strategies are unknown. In this study, all participants receive standard prolonged-speech therapy for their stuttering and half of them receive CBT as well. CBT is designed to reduce fear of negative evaluation in social situations. The short and long term benefits of CBT for adults who stutter will be evaluated. The study is being conducted at three sites: The ASRC research clinic at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at Camperdown, Sydney; the Stuttering Unit, Bankstown Health Service, Sydney; and La Trobe University, Melbourne.

Another research program involves the development of the Lidcombe Program, which is a behavioural treatment for early stuttering. A large NHMRC-funded program is currently investigating the efficacy of delivering this treatment by telehealth. This is a model for delivering treatment by telecommunications rather than through face-to-face contact between the child, the family and the speech pathologist. Telehealth treatment services have potential benefits for rural families. The program will run until the end of 2004. Two preliminary reports on telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program have already been published.

A randomised controlled trial of the standard delivery of the Lidcombe Program is currently under way in New Zealand and is being conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, and the Stuttering Treatment and Research Trust, Auckland. The project is coordinated from the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, at The University of Sydney.

ASRC Lidcombe Program Research Projects:

• Factors that influence the responsiveness of stuttering to the Lidcombe Program
• Whether training parents in groups improves the treatment